Prog Rock

South Side Of the Sky
Going For The One
Ritual (!!)
OOALH
Long Distance Runaround
Soon

Vitalski: It's an obvious answer but do you have Yes' Fragile? The second side is a goldmine. Side 2 opens with the first drum and bass track evah! Also check out the intro to "Heart of the Sunrise" and "The Fish" and the basslines to "Long Distance Runaround" and "Roundabout". Neil Peart is another obvious choice.

I find Inner Mounting Flame more or less unlistenable once I got past how virtuosic it is.

Return to Forever (w/diMeola), for ex., sounds more like emotionless showmanship to me. Fun in some ways, in no way deep like Mahavishnu.

I saw them in Lowell at the Paul Tsongas Arena last weekend (the last gig of this leg of their tour; I think the one right after MSG), which they were videotaping I believe for a PBS special and later a DVD release. They played The Beatles' "Every Little Thing" (an early cover of theirs, but very much revamped) as an encore instead of "Soon", plus "Starship Trooper" as the final closer. Great versions of "And You and I", "Ritual", "Turn of the Century"...

Minuses: They did a shuffle-blues acoustic version of "Roundabout" (like Clapton did for "Layla" on his Unplugged)--sounds too cheezy to me. Dean's inflatable set looked very (ahem) Stonehenge like.

That aside, I continue to be amazed at what a great show these guys still put on, since they're all like 55-60 years old. Plus, the a/c that night was non-existent, so it was like 85-90 degrees on stage the entire time for them.

it actually exists. it's actually pretty good.

Area/Demetrio Stratos: C or D

Rustic Hinge's [recorded 1970, not released until '88, former Arthur Brown sidemen, almost certainly the first Trout Mask Replica-disciples] is excellent but you'll probably never find it.

Prog that rocks...

Alan Parsons Project "Stereotomy" (leans towards pop)
Alan Parsons "Try Anything Once" (absolute rock masterpiece)

Anyone watching the prog rock BBC archive footage, followed by documentary this evening?

answer to original poster's question -- Triode On n'a pas fini d'avoir tout vu (with proto-disco flutes!). it played between almost every outside set at terrastock in june and had people a little wiggly

Stuck this on in the background, we're gonna probably play Scrabble

Nice barnet, Moody Blues frontman.

Hardcore flute action, yes it's the Tull!

Wishbone Ash sound like Polvo!

But look like Creme Brulee.

Hang on, I didn't think any of this kicked off till 10pm? For fuck's sake.

An hour of archive footage with what seem to be Steve Wright penned glib captions, followed by the docu, in which Rick Wakeman will no doubt be aloowed to drone on.

Pretty entertaining so far though!

Ah, right. Bugger, missing the archive footage, then (and still up to eyes with work and reluctanct to give up just yet. Tits).

:-( sorry! First capes sighted too...

have any of these put in in an appearance on the archive footing of the show

John Peel / Alan Freeman / Tommy Vance

...and whispering Bob Harris

Not yet, but Jimmy Saville did one of the intros.

Hmmm Emerson Lake & Palmer suck the big one, sadly.

Soft Machine a lot better!

lol Bob Harris!

does Bob Harris look like a long haired hippy?

love Caravan.

i bet Comus are too obscure for this program

any sign of the van der graaf generator yet?

Harris looking well groomed. Genesis now, I think.

radiohead

"The Devil's Triangle" off of In the Wake of Poseidon is based on Holst's "Mars, the Bringer of War" which is in 5/4 time

For sure. I assume there are a lot of other prog inspirations that hinge of unusual time signatures, like "Carmina Burana." Fripp of course was really into Bartok, he's got some weird stuff for sure. And Stravinsky and Messiaen and ... yeah, lots of "modern"/20th century classical. Maybe it is as simple (so to speak) as no snare/bass drum interplay to emphasize the signatures?

I guess the beginning of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" is in 11/4? That one (and other Mussorgsky, like "Night on Bald Mountain") seems like a clear inspiration for a lot of prog. He's second half of the 19th century, right?

I feel that 'The Rite of Spring' contains most of the DNA that fed Crimson/ELP and others, it's still a well that math rock bands were drawing from decades later.

Perhaps there are well-known film soundtracks too that employed odd time signatures? Some classic, tin pan alley songwriting employed cut bars to get from one section to another, but those tend to pass by without you noticing.

In contrast, a lot of prog has a way of emphasising unusual meters as a form of spiralling/disorientating at the same time as a way of saying 'hey! isn't this groovy!'

apparently there are 444(!) changes in time signature during 'rite of spring'. add in all the dynamic changes, the driving intensity and the general volume and yeah it's basically prog rock before the fact

I guess it all depends on how you count it, right?

xpost Or, more perversely, "I dare you to dance to this."

This is probably completely inappropriate because I don't know much about the scenes this music comes from but my nearest reference point is Art Zoyd and Zvuki Mu. Would love to hear more stuff like this. If I just did a general dive into avant garde music I doubt I'd find much as fun as these. Some of the New Art Ensemble covers aren't so great though.

Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz - Ishtar (from Desert Equations)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SpNwk2dGzM

New Art Ensemble (also known as HXA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TievFIjlzmc

These don't seem to be remastered but I strongly recommend if you haven't heard them
https://www.cherryred.co.uk/carmen-the-albums-1973-1975-3cd-box-set

My hot take is that Fucked Up's Year of the Horse is one of the best prog albums of the last five years.

got to see Nektar last night. kind of an odd experience, they've got only one original member and a number of them seemed to be having off nights. drummer kept missing cues I think on account of the singer, the keyboard player really flubbed his big solo, there were a lot of sound issues early on and the guitar wasn't audible at all until halfway through the second song. they also had a backdrop of 95% AI generated visuals which I absolutely hated. its like they just fed all their song titles and lyrics into the algorithm and put "make it psychedelic" into the prompt. that said when they dipped into their classic 70s stuff they absolutely ruled. so I'm glad I went. also, the opener was the Paul Bielatowitz Band and they were AMAZING. very ELP like but with guitar instead of keyboards. half the set was classical interpretations and they were incredible. maybe the first show I've seen where the opener was better than the main act.

Yeah that was basically my experience when I saw Nektar a few years ago. While great to hear “Remember the Future” live, an experience I never thought I’d have, both sound and visuals could have been better. Glad I saw them, would actually do so again given the opportunity, but so wish I could have seen them in their prime.

speaking of ELP, i heard "From the Beginning" on the radio the other day. it was ... amazing? checking Spotify, it's not even a deep cut, it's one of their most popular songs. it definitely has a weird kind of deep cut vibe. reminds me of the dino valente solo record a bit. and it's basically just two chords, and no drums just bongos -- not very prog. idk, had me thinking i should explore ELP but i don't know if they have any other tracks like this

in particular the synth solo is just pure magic. people shout out the Lucky Man solo a lot but imo this one is way better. I love how the guitar chords slow down as it approaches the end. Lake's voice is incredible on that one too. but no, they don't have many tracks like that, in fact the idea of someone buying Trilogy on the strength of that track and immediately getting hit with a 10 minute hymn that blows up into Christmas music is pretty funny

one cool thing about the Nektar show was we were able to get right up in front. at one point the lead singer was looking right at me and I cracked a huge grin which made him do the same thing. but the truth was it wasn't because of the music, it was because in that exact moment I realized he kinda resembled Neil Breen.

Funny the way the ages turn in over themselves. I gather that back in those heady ELP days, there were a lot of listeners who would think, "Hmph. Classical pretensions." Now here I am listening to The Rite of Spring for the first time and thinking, "Whoa, this is so prog."

i should explore ELP but i don't know if they have any other tracks like this

"Take a Pebble", "Still... You Turn Me On" and maybe "Step Aside" from the Emerson, Lake and Powell album. The Lake side of Works Vol. 1 sometimes goes for this kind of intimate ballad, but everything is covered in bombastic reverb that makes it sound like he's singing from a Swiss mountaintop.

Have been enjoying "Circle Of The Crayfish" from 1972 by nuts German organ/drums duo Sixty Nine, pretty much the exact meeting point between ELP and Brainticket.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUK2eG6XhuA

Nothing to do with this thread. But today I misheard "My building has great progressive broadband" as "My building has a great progressive rock band" and I asked "What's their name?"

Well, yeah. What you misheard would be a much more interesting conversation.